The present application claims priority to Japanese Application No. P2000-153445 filed May 24, 2000 which application is incorporated herein by reference to the extent permitted by law.
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element and a fabrication method thereof.
A semiconductor resistance element configured as a semiconductor region formed by doping an impurity in the surface of a semiconductor substrate is one of elements widely used as components of a semiconductor integrated circuit.
A known resistance element is typically formed by doping an n-type impurity in a semi-insulating compound semiconductor substrate, for example, a semi-insulating GaAs substrate at a low impurity concentration. The structure of such a resistance element and a fabrication method thereof will be described below with reference to process diagrams shown in FIGS. 3A to 3D and FIGS. 4A to 4D.
As shown in FIG. 3A, a protective film 2 made from SiN and having a thickness of 50 nm is formed overall on a semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 by a plasma CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) process. A photoresist layer 3 is once formed overall on the SiN protective film 2, and a portion, positioned over a semiconductor resistance element forming area, of the photoresist layer 3 is removed by photolithography, to form an opening 3w. Ions of Si representative of an n-type impurity are implanted in the surface of the semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 through the opening 3W formed in the protective film 2, to form an impurity doped region 4.
As shown in FIG. 3B, the photoresist layer 3 is removed, and a photoresist layer 5 is once formed overall on the protective film 2, and portions, positioned over electrode extraction region forming areas at both ends of the semiconductor resistance element forming area, of the photoresist layer 5 are removed by photolithography, to form two openings 5w. 
Ions of Si as the n-type impurity are implanted in the surface of the semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 at a high concentration through the openings 5w, to form two high concentration impurity doped regions 6.
As shown in FIG. 3C, the photoresist layer 5 and the surface protective layer 2 are removed, and then the semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 is annealed in an arsine atmosphere, to activate ions of Si in the impurity doped regions 4 and 6. As a result, a semiconductor resistance region 4R having a specific resistivity is formed from the region 4, and electrode extraction regions 6R each having a specific low resistivity are formed from the regions 6.
As shown in FIG. 3D, an insulating layer 7 made from SiN and having a thickness of 300 nm is once formed, by the plasma CVD process, overall on the surface of the semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 in which the regions 4R and 6R have been formed. A photoresist layer 8 is formed on the insulating layer 7, and two openings 8w are formed in the photoresist layer 8 at positions over the electrode extraction regions 6R. Portions, positioned over the electrode extraction regions 6R, of the insulating layer 7 are removed by reactive ion etching through the openings 8w, to form two electrode contact windows 7w. 
As shown in FIG. 4A, an electrode metal layer 9 is formed overall on the photoresist layer 8 in such a manner as to be in contact with the electrode extraction regions 6R exposed to the outside through the contact windows 7w. The electrode metal layer 9 is formed by sequentially forming an AuGe layer having a thickness of 150 nm and a Ni layer having a thickness of 50 nm by a vapor-deposition process.
As shown in FIG. 4B, the portion, on the photoresist layer 8, of the metal layer 9 is selectively removed by a lift-off process, that is, by removing the photoresist layer 8, whereby only portions, on the electrode extraction regions 6R, of the metal layer 9 remain. The substrate 1 is then heated in a forming gas at about 450xc2x0 C., to form a pair of electrodes 9R by the metal layer 9 being in ohmic contact with the electrode extraction regions 6R.
As shown in FIG. 4C, a wiring metal layer 10 for forming wiring is formed overall on the insulating layer 7. The wiring metal layer 10 is formed by sequentially forming a Ti layer having a thickness of 50 nm, a Pt layer having a thickness of 50 nm, and an Au layer having a thickness of 200 nm by the vapor-deposition process. A photoresist layer 11 is formed on the wiring metal layer 10, and is patterned by photolithography in such a manner as to remove portions, other than wiring forming areas, of the photoresist layer 11 while leaving the wiring forming areas of the photoresist layer 11.
As shown in FIG. 4D, the wiring metal layer 10 is etched by an ion-milling process using the patterned photoresist layer 11 as a mask, to form wiring portions 10R being in ohmic-contact with the electrodes 9R.
In this way, a semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element 12 is formed. With this structure of the semiconductor device, the resistance of the semiconductor resistance element 12 can be set to a desired value by suitably selecting an accelerating voltage applied to Si atoms and the dose of the Si atoms in ion implantation of Si for forming the semiconductor resistance region 4R.
Such a resistance element can be fabricated at a low cost; however, it has a problem that if the impurity concentration in the semiconductor resistance region 4R is reduced for ensuring a high sheet resistance of the region 4R, an electric resistance of the region 4R largely varies depending on a substrate potential.
The reason for this is due to one form of a so-called back gate effect.
FIG. 6 is a graph showing one example of measuring the back gate effect exerted on a current-voltage characteristic of a semiconductor resistance element configured as a n-type semiconductor resistance region 4R formed in a semi-insulating semiconductor substrate 1 shown in FIG. 5. In this example, measurement is performed by changing a substrate potential Vsub in a range of xe2x88x926V to 0 V.
The substrate potential is, as shown in FIG. 5, applied from a substrate electrode 13 provided at a position apart from the semiconductor resistance region 4R formed in the substrate 1.
As is apparent from the data shown in FIG. 6, as the substrate potential Vsub becomes smaller on the negative side, an electrical resistance of the semiconductor resistance region 4R becomes larger and thereby a saturated current flowing in the semiconductor resistance region 4R becomes smaller. The reasons for this may be considered to be due to the fact that a spatial charge layer between the semiconductor resistance region 4R and the semi-insulating substrate region of the substrate 1 is spread to the semiconductor resistance region 4R side by the substrate potential Vsub to reduce a sheet carrier concentration in the semiconductor resistance region 4R.
Even when such a back gate effect emerges, if the strength of the back gate effect is stabilized, the circuit can be designed in consideration of the back gate effect.
In the real process, however, the strength of the back gate effect may be often unstable. The reason for this may be considered to be due to the fact that an effective acceptor concentration around the resistance layer varies depending on factors associated with the substrate or process (see N. Goto, et al., xe2x80x9cTwo Dimensional Numerical Simulation of Side-Gating Effect in GaAs MESFET""sxe2x80x9d, IEEE ED-17, No. 8, 1990).
Accordingly, to fabricate circuits using such resistance elements at a high yield, the above-described effective acceptor concentration must be controlled to be usually kept constant.
However, since the derivation of such an acceptor is not necessarily clear, it is not easy to control the acceptor concentration.
An object of the present invention is to provide a semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element, which is capable of suppressing a variation in characteristics of the semiconductor resistance element due to an acceptor concentration in a substrate region difficult to be controlled as described above, and stably improving the fabrication yield of a semiconductor integrated circuit using the semiconductor device, and a fabrication method thereof.
According to the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element including an n-type semiconductor resistance region formed in the surface of a compound semiconductor substrate, and a p-type buried region provided between the n-type semiconductor resistance region and a substrate region of the compound semiconductor substrate.
In this configuration, preferably, an acceptor concentration in the p-type buried region is selected to be higher than an acceptor concentration in the substrate region and to be lower than a donor concentration in the n-type semiconductor resistance region.
According to the present invention, there is also provided a method of fabricating a semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element, including: a step of doping an n-type impurity in a selected region in the surface of a semi-insulating compound semiconductor substrate via a first mask layer formed on the surface of the compound semiconductor substrate, to form an n-type impurity doped region; a step of doping, after or before the step of forming the n-type impurity doped region, a p-type impurity in the surface of the compound semiconductor substrate via a second mask layer formed on the surface of the compound semiconductor substrate, to form a p-type impurity doped region; a step of heat-treating the compound semiconductor substrate, to activate the impurities in the n-type impurity doped region and the p-type impurity doped region, thereby forming an n-type semiconductor resistance region, and also forming a p-type buried region between the n-type semiconductor resistance region and a substrate region of the semiconductor substrate in such a manner as to bring the p-type buried region into contact with the n-type semiconductor resistance region; and a step of forming ohmic electrodes in the semiconductor resistance region.
In this fabrication method, preferably, one mask layer is commonly used as the first and second mask layers.
With this configuration, the p-type buried region is provided between the n-type semiconductor resistance region and the substrate region, and accordingly, by suitably selecting the impurity concentrations of the n-type semiconductor resistance region and the p-type buried region, it is possible to suppress the back gate effect due to a variation in effective concentration of an acceptor present in the substrate region, and the spread of a depletion layer toward the semiconductor resistance region and a variation in the depletion layer toward the semiconductor resistance region.
As described above, according to the semiconductor device having a semiconductor resistance element, since the impurity concentration in the semiconductor resistance element can be increased, the characteristics thereof can be stabilized, with a result that the semiconductor resistance element with less variation in characteristics due to the back gate effect can be obtained with a high yield.
Since the thickness of the semiconductor resistance region can be reduced, the sheet resistance thereof can be sufficiently increased. Accordingly, the semiconductor resistance element having a large resistance without increasing the length of the resistance region between electrodes can be obtained, so that the occupied area of the resistance region, that is, the resistance element can be reduced, with a result that it is possible to increase the packaging density of a semiconductor integrated circuit including the semiconductor device having the semiconductor resistance element and reduce the size of the semiconductor integrated circuit.
Since the semiconductor resistance element with less variation in characteristics due to the back gate effect can be obtained as described above, if the semiconductor device having the semiconductor resistance element is applied to a DCFL (Direct Coupled FET Logic), a transmission delay time and a noise margin thereof can be improved, and if the semiconductor device is applied to a bias circuit with divided resistances, a designed voltage division ratio can be stably obtained.
Since the parasitic capacitance liable to cause deterioration of the frequency characteristic can be prevented as described above, the semiconductor device having the semiconductor resistance element can be desirably applied not only to a logic gate circuit but also to a high frequency circuit.